Where the River Meets a Rose
by waterlily11
Summary: River thought she knew everything about the Doctor.


River was escaping from a bunch of angry and surprisingly fit policemen for "borrowing" their box of donuts, when she saw a familiar blue police box.

"Oh please be the right one," River said out loud as she raced towards the door. Not that it mattered much. She could blast the wall with her squareness gun and continue running if it wasn't the time machine.

But it was and TARDIS welcomed her as she quickly put a temporary shield around it.

Then she balanced the box of donuts on the control panel and picked out the biggest one.

She took a bite. "Delicious," she confirmed. Then she looked for the Doctor. Where was that bowtie-crazed man?

She guessed that he was probably up and about wandering the city which meant she had roughly an hour to explore the TARDIS.

Though they were now married, and she figured she was probably the sole person who knew him best, she knew there was a certain part in his past that he kept shut-mouth about.

After River had gone through her third regeneration, she had bombarded the Doctor with millions of questions, especially those involving the recent times which were all concentrated in London she had found while researching the Doctor's file.

"Big spaceship on Christmas day 2005? Canary-Wharf? Big star in sky? Flying Titanic? People in stadium disappearing in London's future Olympics?" She would ask, one after to another.

To an answer that hardly deserved that term since the Doctor would just jump, startled, and then either pretend not to hear her, or just reply in a jovial voice "Cybermen! Versus Daleks! You would have loved it!" before quickly changing the subject. Which struck River as completely abnormal as she knew from experience, that the Doctor had a reputation for making even the smallest of adventures into a drawn out story that took days to finish.

So, River wondered, why the silence over events that happened in the very early twenty-first century?

Well River was going to find out what that was. She wasn't one to let things just slowly come her way when they did. And since the Doctor wouldn't indulge her with that information, she was going to snoop.

River finished another donut and wiped her hands on her pants. Then she walked to the corridors and started heading over to the Doctor's main personal room, hoping to start with the basics.

The TARDIS wouldn't even give her any information about that certain time period either. Which struck River as odd, since she managed to scavenge every single bit about the Doctor from the TARDIS; including some rather embarrassing situations and fashion fails from his past.

She couldn't even bring herself to destroy that awful techno-colored coat he had worn in one of his past regenerations. She almost did, but then realized that this coat would be a fabulous way to ridicule the Doctor so she stole it instead. She was still figuring a plan of humiliation for the future.

She walked corridor after corridor. She went into the Doctor's main personal room, where he spent most of his time in the TARDIS when not in the control room.

It was a complete mess. Of course, if the Doctor were here to see River's reaction, he would reply with his index finger shaking in the air, that everything was exactly where he intended it to be. She grinned, imagining him straightening his bowtie after saying his short statement.

But it was because he wasn't here at the moment why she was here in his room. She figured the best way to find something would be to start looking under the sole comfortable item in the room. A huge bean bag.

She rolled her eyes as she lifted it up. All she found were pictures that had obviously been torn down from the wall in the past. There were still pictures covering the walls of the room, but they only showed the recent ones with him in his latest regeneration with Amy and Rory or River.

There were in fact, so many pictures that River was surprised that he even managed to be able to rest comfortably on this bean bag.

She saw pictures of a dark skinned woman in a doctor's coat who was smirking at the camera while pointing at a certificate she held up. She saw another picture of a brown haired woman and a boy who was carrying a robotic dog. Many different people she saw, mostly female (though she did note Captain Jack grinning in his World War II attire) with the same man who sported a different face in each picture.

Even though there must have been at least twenty different companions, each starred in about thirty pictures which documented whatever adventure they just had.

Except for one companion. She only appeared in just one photo that was terribly worn out though her clothes clearly marked her as early twenty-first century. River's eyebrows frowned as she noted that particular fact. River observed the picture closer. She had a shock of bright blonde hair and she was hugging a tall skinny man who was wearing a huge orange spacesuit.

For a moment, River shivered as she thought about spacesuits, but she quickly shook it away and went back to investigating this photo.

They were in the TARDIS control room, but the room was smaller and had a more organic look to it than the current one. The blonde girl was obviously overjoyed though the makeup around her huge soft eyes was smeared. The man, who River guessed was the most previous regeneration of the Doctor, was grinning, his eyes full of light.

In fact, they were the happiest she had ever seen in the Doctor, including all those pictures she had just went through.

She put it off as youth, but secretly she knew that even in the pictures that were so much older than the one with this blonde girl, the Doctor never carried that same life and _joy_ that he had in this picture.

And peering into picture as far as she physically could, she could see that the Doctor wasn't even looking at whatever was taking the picture. His eyes were cast down to the side, looking at the girl beside him.

She was tempted to take down one of the pictures of herself with the Doctor to compare, but she wasn't sure she wanted to see the comparisons.

As strong as River was, and she knew it as a fact that she was a killer combination of strong, confident and fearless, River decided to stop her investigating right there.

She pushed the pile of photos back under the bean bag and looked one last time at the crinkled picture with the blonde girl, before shoving it under as well

When the Doctor kept quiet about the events from that time period, River just assumed at worst that he had gone through another extreme guilt situation like he did with Donna, his old "mate" as he said that one time. But this blonde girl was way more than that.

She knew in the near future, she would want to know more. But right now, River wasn't ready to find out who exactly this girl was.

Love hurts the most when you realize that there is so much more you don't know about the love of your life. And River thought she knew everything.


End file.
